Our Trip To JaMaiCa!!

We were able to go to Jamaica this last week, and had a blast! I took tons of pictures but tried to narrow it down to my favorites. We stayed at a Sandals All Inclusive Resort in Negril.

Enjoying the beautiful sunset

Snorkeling

We took a cruise out to Ricks Cafe one evening. When we got there they gave us life jackets and let us swim over to the Cliffs at Ricks Cafe to do some Cliff Jumping. Here is Bryan giving it a try. I don't remember how many feet from the water it was, but it was pretty high up there. Our tour guides told us that many people have broken legs and arms doing this, so I of course did not try it. Bryan did it once, then called it good!

Ricks Cafe

One of the CJ's (Crazy Jamaican) on the boat. If you ever need to liven up a party, invite a Jamaican. They are Hilarious! They had us cracking up constantly. Great great people with awesome sense of humors.

One day we did the Zipline Canopy Tour. This was probably Bryan and I's favorite tour that we did. It consisted of about 20 different ziplines. They have platforms built in trees and you zipline from one tree to another. It was gorgeous and a ton of fun.

Our tour guide was telling us that there is nothing dangerous in the Jamaican forrests, but we found many of these spiders hanging above our heads. They are not poisonous, but nonetheless are pretty darn creepy.

This as at the Dolphin Cove. They had some different reptiles to check out.

Dolphin Cove

We got to swim with the dolphins, which also was a once in a lifetime experience! It was so much fun. Dolphins are like dogs. They love to play and love to be touched and loved. We got to ride on their bellies for a short time, dance with them, sing with them and give them kisses. This picture is not of me unfortunately. They would not let us take our camera in the water and get our own pictures. They wanted to charge you to buy theirs for a ridiculous price, so we didn't buy any. Call it a boycott if you will! Now I am regretting it though!

These are some friends that we met at the resort.
Bryan, I, Robbi, Robert, Mark and Margo

Tory, Bryan and Josh at Margaritaville

We were able to meet up with our friends Josh and Virginia while we were there. We planned our trip, then they planned a trip out there to get married. We had no idea each other was going and found out that we picked resorts that were 5 minutes from each other, and our vacations overlapped by a day! We thought it was pretty funny how that worked out! We got a taxi and went to Margaritaville, Ricks Cafe , and did some shopping.
Above is Me, Bryan, Virginia, Josh, Tory, and Hilda

Ricks Cafe

My view from my lawn chair..........ahhhh

This is an idea of what the "stores" look like there. I did not realize how much poverty was there, and it really opened my eyes to how lucky we are to live in the U.S. The day that we got there and drove from the airport to our hotel, I was wondering what I got myself into! It was a little bit scary driving past armed guards with machine guns in their hands! We saw many people bathing in the ocean, and many very small shacks that held large families with no electricity or running water. I think I saw 1 park the whole time I was there. It really made me think how lucky we are to raise our children in pretty safe communities and my heart ached for those children who have nothing. The thing that really surprised me is that even though these people are very poor, they have hearts of gold and are such amazing people.
We had such a great experience and are so glad we got the chance to go. Thanks to our Wonderful parents who took our kids! They had so much fun and it made it easier on us to know that they were safe and keeping busy! It is good to be home again and to be able to give my kids lots and lots of kisses.